Collected Works

Raymond Pettibon: Homo Americanus presents over 600 works from every part of the artist’s career, the majority of which have never been published before. Arranged thematically in 32 chapters, it charts the appearance and development of the themes that have defined Pettibon’s oeuvre. Sections are introduced with excerpts from interviews with the artist, and are further discussed in an appendix by curator Ulrich Loock. Also featured are biographical notes compiled by Lucas Zwirner. This catalogue is the first to tackle Pettibon’s work as a whole—as a kind of hive-mind of American culture whose various branches constantly address and reinterpret one another. Of particular interest are Pettibon’s own readings of individual works in the book. In excerpts paired with corresponding images, Pettibon guides readers through his complex turns of thought, inviting readers to enter more deeply into his thinking. Published for a major Pettibon retrospective in Europe, the book includes a complete facsimile of his first artist’s book, Captive Chains—unavailable for decades—plus early drawings completed with his nephew, record covers, flyers and sections dedicated to collages and drawings from the 1980s to today. This is the definitive Pettibon volume for novices and experts alike.

Raymond Pettibon grew up in Hermosa Beach and graduated with a degree in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1977. Pettibon’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the US and abroad. Prominent venues which have held recent solo exhibitions include the MoCA San Diego, La Jolla, California; and the Whitney Museum, New York (both 2005). In 1998, he had his first American museum presentation, organized by The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which traveled to The Drawing Center, New York, and the MOCA, Los Angeles.

?Ulrich Loock was born in 1953 in Braunschweig, Germany. He was Director of Kunsthalle Bern from 1985–1997, Director of Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland from 1997–2001, and Deputy Director of Museu de Serralves, Porto, Portugal from 2003–2010. He currently lives and works in Berlin as an independent curator, art critic and lecturer. He has curated numerous exhibitions of artists such as Michael Asher, Matthew Barney, Marlene Dumas, Robert Gober, Katharina Grosse, Eberhard Havekost, Maria Lassnig, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Gerhard Richter, Wilhelm Sasnal, Thomas Schu?tte, Thomas Struth, Luc Tuymans and Christopher Wool. In 1995, he curated a comprehensive show of Raymond Pettibon’s work at Kunsthalle Bern, and included the artist’s work in the 2006 show The 80s: A Topology at Museu de Serralves.

Lucas Zwirner is Editor at David Zwirner Books and has contributed texts to gallery publications, including On Kawara: Date Painting(s) in New York and 136 Other Cities (2012), Raymond Pettibon: To Wit (2013), and Jason Rhoades: PeaRoeFoam (2015).

Published by David Zwirner Books /Venus Over Manhattan.Foreword by Adam Lindemann. Text by Carlo McCormick.

Raymond Pettibon (born 1957) has created a vocabulary of characters that reappear consistently across his oeuvre. The most poetic and revealing of these may be the surfer, the solitary longboarder challenging a massive wave. This revised and expanded edition of Raymond Pettibon: Surfers 1985-2015, the first printing of which sold out almost immediately upon publication in 2014, features 20 additional works, as well as new color separations and jacket design. Nearly all the works depict an ocean roiling with chaotic swells, accompanied by non sequiturs, quotations and bits of poetry in the artist's handwriting. Organized chronologically, the publication traces the surfer series, from early small-scale monochrome India ink drawings to numerous examples from the 1990s when the artist introduced color, culminating with his recent large-scale works, some of which were executed directly on a wall. Rounding out the publication is a meditation by the writer Carlo McCormick.

Are Your Motives Pure?

Published by Venus Over Manhattan.Foreword by Adam Lindemann. Text by Carlo McCormick.

Since the 1970s Raymond Pettibon (born 1957) has created a vocabulary of symbols that reappear consistently if enigmatically across his oeuvre. These range from baseball players, vixens, light bulbs and railway trains to the cartoon character Gumby and infamous murderer Charles Manson. But the most poetic and revealing of Pettibon's symbols may be the surfer, the solitary longboarder challenging a massive wave. In his "surfer paintings," viewers ride along with a counterculture existentialist hero who perhaps is the artist's nearest proxy. Almost all of the works included in this volume depict an ocean roiling with chaotic swells, accompanied by nonsequiturs, quotations and bits of poetry in the artist's handwriting. Among these works are early small-scale, monochrome India ink paintings; numerous paintings from the 1990s when the artist introduced color to his work; and a group of rare, large-scale paintings.

Published by David Zwirner.Text by Lucas Zwirner. Interview by Kim Gordon.

In the summer of 2013, Raymond Pettibon (born 1957) converted the David Zwirner exhibition space into an improvised studio, in order to prepare the drawings and collages for his critically acclaimed show at the gallery. The works ranged from depictions of Joe DiMaggio as a young boy, Bob Dylan and the comic strip character Bazooka Joe to pieces dovetailing popular imagery with quotations from Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, Henry James, Gustave Flaubert or the Bible, and addressing themes of violence, humor, sex, evolution, religion, politics, literature, youth, art history and sports. This volume documents both the making of these works during Pettibon's intensive tenure in the space and the finished works themselves. Boasting a drawing made especially for the cover, Raymond Pettibon: To Wit includes an essay by Lucas Zwirner titled "A Month with Raymond" that describes the show's making and offers fresh observations on the relationship between word and image, and reading and writing, in Pettibon's art. This essay is complemented by a selection of black-and-white photographs from Andreas Laszlo Konrath, who also documents the creation of these works, and an interview with Pettibon by artist and founding member of Sonic Youth Kim Gordon, who first encountered Pettibon's work in the early 1980s in Los Angeles.

Political Works 1975-2013

Published by Hatje Cantz/ David Zwirner/Regen Projects.Text by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh.

Since the late 1970s, as a pioneer of Southern California underground culture, Raymond Pettibon has blurred the boundaries of "high" and "low," from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, literature, sports, religion, politics and sexuality. Rich in detail, his obsessively worked drawings pull freely from myriad sources spanning the cultural spectrum. The resulting, highly poetic constructions function as acute reflections of contemporary society. Throughout the years, his subjects have included political figures and historical events, with particular intensity since the events of September 11, 2001. Seen here are images of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, J. Edgar Hoover, both Bush presidents, the Kennedys, Hitler, scenes from the Vietnam War and protest movements, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prisoner abuse of Abu Ghraib, President Obama and Osama bin Laden. Raymond Pettibon (born 1957) studied economics at UCLA around the same time he joined his brother in the punk band Black Flag. He soon began to contribute artwork to album covers, flyers and t-shirts, for the band and its label, SST Records, and exhibited his work in group shows in galleries in the 1980s. Since the 1990s his work has been the subject of numerous major solo exhibitions.

Published by JRP|Ringier.Edited and with text by Lynn Kost.

Whuytuyp compiles work by Raymond Pettibon (born 1957) done over the past five years, from artist’s books and prints to animations and installations. Since 2001, several changes in Pettibon’s style have been increasingly evident, most notably in his use of broader brushes, even more expressive brushstrokes and a shift towards bolder color. These developments became consolidated around 2006, in the earliest drawings included in this volume. Also apparent throughout Whuytuyp is a more philosophical tone to the language used, and more overt social commentary--as well as an expansion of the range of references to include film, illustration and cartoons. What continues to characterize Pettibon’s art is its ability to break and recombine discourses, liberating those sidelined, repressed and taboo aspects of American culture and creating his unique visual-linguistic polyphony.

Published by Walther König, Köln.

Raymond Pettibon’s genius for devising unpredictable, amusing tensions between word and image reach into new terrain with his newest works, gathered in this staplebound volume for the artist’s 2011 show at Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin. Ranging from laconic single images to collaged drawing and works exploring a wilder cacophony of caption and image, these works, rendered in India ink, and reproduced in full color and in installation shots at the CFA, show Pettibon locating new heights and depths of wit and improbable association--as well as exploring more political content, with references to Obama and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Alongside these developments, familiar Pettibon imagery of sport, pulp and psychedelica also abounds. Raymond Pettibon: Looker-Upper provides a handsomely designed update on the artist’s dark yet rarely dystopian universe.

As Told to Raymond Pettibon

Published by Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

According to the influential Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley, quoted in The New York Times Magazine, many of Raymond Pettibon's earliest supporters were artists. Some people liked Raymond because they considered him a guy who didn't kiss the butt of the art world. Others thought he represented punk, or blue-collar Conceptualism or D.I.Y. What interested me about him was how he constructed things--like Lautrčamont, who's my favorite writer--with all these different sources juggled and combined into something particular. Raymond had that definite auteur look, which was faux-romantic, faux-Gothic, very Tennessee Williams, very foppishly funny. Best-known for his iconic album covers and zine-style ink drawings featuring surfers, old-time baseball players, gangsters, religious nuts, trains, Gumby and the character Vavoom from the old Felix the Cat cartoon, Pettibon is also the author of a series of super-low-fi home videos, made with his friends beginning in the 1980s. Starring the very artists and musicians who supported Pettibon from the start, they are available here for the first time on DVD. Red Tide Rising: Venice and Mars (2001) is a 2-disk set that deals with the life of Jim Morrison. Sir Drone: A New Film About the New Beatles (1989-90) chronicles the trials and tribulations of two nascent punk rockers in late-70s Los Angeles as they struggle to not be posers. Filmed over two days, it stars Mikes Watt and Mike Kelley. Citizen Tania: As Told to Raymond Pettibon (1989-90) deals with Patty Hearst and her Symbionese Liberation Army alias "Tania." Judgement Day Theater: The Book of Manson (1989-90) is an account of the famous Manson family. And The Whole World is Watching: Weatherman '69 (1989-90), starring Mike Watt, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, offers up sketches of historic encounters between the radical splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society, Weatherman, and pop celebrities like Jane Fonda and John Lennon.

The Book of Manson

Published by Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

According to the influential Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley, quoted in The New York Times Magazine, "many of Raymond Pettibon's earliest supporters were artists. Some people liked Raymond because they considered him a guy who didn't kiss the butt of the art world. Others thought he represented punk, or blue-collar Conceptualism or D.I.Y. What interested me about him was how he constructed things--like Lautrčamont, who's my favorite writer--with all these different sources juggled and combined into something particular. Raymond had that definite auteur look, which was faux-romantic, faux-Gothic, very Tennessee Williams, very foppishly funny."Best-known for his iconic album covers and zine-style ink drawings featuring surfers, old-time baseball players, gangsters, religious nuts, trains, Gumby and the character Vavoom from the old Felix the Cat cartoon, Pettibon is also the author of a series of super-low-fi home videos, made with his friends beginning in the 1980s. Starring the very artists and musicians who supported Pettibon from the start, they are available here for the first time on DVD. Red Tide Rising: Venice and Mars (2001) is a 2-disk set that deals with the life of Jim Morrison. Sir Drone: A New Film About the New Beatles (1989-90) chronicles the trials and tribulations of two nascent punk rockers in late-70s Los Angeles as they struggle to not be posers. Filmed over two days, it stars Mikes Watt and Mike Kelley. Citizen Tania: As Told to Raymond Pettibon (1989-90) deals with Patty Hearst and her Symbionese Liberation Army alias "Tania." Judgement Day Theater: The Book of Manson (1989-90) is an account of the famous Manson family. And The Whole World is Watching: Weatherman '69 (1989-90), starring Mike Watt, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, offers up sketches of historic encounters between the radical splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society, Weatherman, and pop celebrities like Jane Fonda and John Lennon.

Weatherman '69

Published by Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

According to the influential Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley, quoted in The New York Times Magazine, "many of Raymond Pettibon's earliest supporters were artists. Some people liked Raymond because they considered him a guy who didn't kiss the butt of the art world. Others thought he represented punk, or blue-collar Conceptualism or D.I.Y. What interested me about him was how he constructed things--like Lautrčamont, who's my favorite writer--with all these different sources juggled and combined into something particular. Raymond had that definite auteur look, which was faux-romantic, faux-Gothic, very Tennessee Williams, very foppishly funny."Best-known for his iconic album covers and zine-style ink drawings featuring surfers, old-time baseball players, gangsters, religious nuts, trains, Gumby and the character Vavoom from the old Felix the Cat cartoon, Pettibon is also the author of a series of super-low-fi home videos, made with his friends beginning in the 1980s. Starring the very artists and musicians who supported Pettibon from the start, they are available here for the first time on DVD. Red Tide Rising: Venice and Mars (2001) is a 2-disk set that deals with the life of Jim Morrison. Sir Drone: A New Film About the New Beatles (1989-90) chronicles the trials and tribulations of two nascent punk rockers in late-70s Los Angeles as they struggle to not be posers. Filmed over two days, it stars Mikes Watt and Mike Kelley. Citizen Tania: As Told to Raymond Pettibon (1989-90) deals with Patty Hearst and her Symbionese Liberation Army alias "Tania." Judgement Day Theater: The Book of Manson (1989-90) is an account of the famous Manson family. And The Whole World is Watching: Weatherman '69 (1989-90), starring Mike Watt, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, offers up sketches of historic encounters between the radical splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society, Weatherman, and pop celebrities like Jane Fonda and John Lennon.

A New Film About the New Beatles

Published by Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

According to the influential Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley, quoted in The New York Times Magazine, "many of Raymond Pettibon's earliest supporters were artists. Some people liked Raymond because they considered him a guy who didn't kiss the butt of the art world. Others thought he represented punk, or blue-collar Conceptualism or D.I.Y. What interested me about him was how he constructed things--like Lautrčamont, who's my favorite writer--with all these different sources juggled and combined into something particular. Raymond had that definite auteur look, which was faux-romantic, faux-Gothic, very Tennessee Williams, very foppishly funny."Best-known for his iconic album covers and zine-style ink drawings featuring surfers, old-time baseball players, gangsters, religious nuts, trains, Gumby and the character Vavoom from the old Felix the Cat cartoon, Pettibon is also the author of a series of super-low-fi home videos, made with his friends beginning in the 1980s. Starring the very artists and musicians who supported Pettibon from the start, they are available here for the first time on DVD. Red Tide Rising: Venice and Mars (2001) is a 2-disk set that deals with the life of Jim Morrison. Sir Drone: A New Film About the New Beatles (1989-90) chronicles the trials and tribulations of two nascent punk rockers in late-70s Los Angeles as they struggle to not be posers. Filmed over two days, it stars Mikes Watt and Mike Kelley. Citizen Tania: As Told to Raymond Pettibon (1989-90) deals with Patty Hearst and her Symbionese Liberation Army alias "Tania." Judgement Day Theater: The Book of Manson (1989-90) is an account of the famous Manson family. And The Whole World is Watching: Weatherman '69 (1989-90), starring Mike Watt, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, offers up sketches of historic encounters between the radical splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society, Weatherman, and pop celebrities like Jane Fonda and John Lennon.

Venice & Mars

Published by Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

According to the influential Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley, quoted in The New York Times Magazine, "many of Raymond Pettibon's earliest supporters were artists. Some people liked Raymond because they considered him a guy who didn't kiss the butt of the art world. Others thought he represented punk, or blue-collar Conceptualism or D.I.Y. What interested me about him was how he constructed things--like Lautréamont, who's my favorite writer--with all these different sources juggled and combined into something particular. Raymond had that definite auteur look, which was faux-romantic, faux-Gothic, very Tennessee Williams, very foppishly funny." Best known for his iconic album covers and zine-style ink drawings featuring surfers, old-time baseball players, gangsters, religious nuts, trains, Gumby and the character Vavoom from the old Felix the Cat cartoon, Pettibon is also the author of a series of super-low-fi home videos, made with his friends beginning in the 1980s. Starring the very artists and musicians who supported Pettibon from the start, they are available here for the first time on DVD. Red Tide Rising: Venice & Mars (2001) is a two-disc set that deals with the life of Jim Morrison. Sir Drone: A New Film About the New Beatles (1989-90) chronicles the trials and tribulations of two nascent punk rockers in late-70s Los Angeles as they struggle to not be posers. Filmed over two days, it stars Mike Watt and Mike Kelley. Citizen Tania: As Told to Raymond Pettibon (1989-90) deals with Patty Hearst and her Symbionese Liberation Army alias "Tania." Judgement Day Theater: The Book of Manson (1989-90) is an account of the famous Manson Family. And The Whole World is Watching: Weatherman '69 (1989-90), starring Mike Watt, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, offers up sketches of historic encounters between the radical splinter group of the Students for a Democratic Society the Weatherman and pop celebrities like Jane Fonda and John Lennon.

Published by PictureBox.

For this catalogue to the 2008 NADA fair in Miami, each gallery submitted a single piece of art. Gathered, the images present a capsule of contemporary art today, from studio to marketplace. In tribute to Miami, the catalogue is printed in one color--deep blue--lending a luminous, aquatic feel.

The by-now widely known cult artist Raymond Pettibon was first recognized outside of the art scene for creating flyers, concert posters and album covers for the independent record label SST, owned by his brother, Greg Ginn. But he soon distanced himself from the Californian hardcore punk scene and developed, sometimes in books, sometimes on single sheets, his "Tragédie humaine," which has continued to chip away at America's understanding of itself, deconstructing popular myths in a disturbing connection of image and text, for many decades now. Pettibon, whose work also includes several feature films and animation works, is a precise artistic observer of the American pop cultural milieux. He finds inspiration in the comic style of Milton Caniff and John Kirby, in 1930s and 40s design, and in the flower-power dreams of later decades, which he gleefully transforms into scenes of bloody massacre. His use of iconic superheroes and super-villains (Batman, Superman, Jesus, Stalin, Charles Manson) as well as several key recurring motifs (trains, penises, surfers, baseball players), in endless variation, creates a visual "remix" as it were. In these black-and-white drawings, which occasionally use red bullet wounds for contrast; in later, color-intensive work, he discovers an enigmatic, cannibalistic world, whose grotesque distortion reveals hidden truths about our own, without completely exposing its secrets. Whatever It Is You're Looking For, You Won't Find It Here includes more than 500 drawings and documentation of a 50-foot long mural, alongside an interview with the artist and two essays.

Published by Walther König, Köln.Essay by Robert Ohrt.

Raymond Pettibon counts among his muses Henry James, Mickey Spillane, Marcel Proust, William Blake, and Samuel Beckett, and pours their mututal influence, along with a bucket of West-coast punk rock, into elegant, aggressive watercolor cartoons. This selection includes everything from city streets to alien-on-human sex, captioned, "it went on for 20 minutes instead of the required 2 because there was a live feed back home."

Published by Walther König, Köln.Artwork by Raymond Pettibon.

Four low-tech films produced in L.A. in the summer of 2002 from scripts written by artist Raymond Pettibon, films in which the artist's friends perform, as does the artist himself. A nostalgic but timeless look back at the punk music scene of the late 1970s and early 80s. Please note that this DVD is from England and is formatted in their regional PAL video format. IT WILL NOT WORK IN STANDARD U.S. DVD PLAYERS. Some computers may have the capability to play this, however please check your computer specifications before purchasing.

Published by Rizzoli.

Raymond Pettibon's comic-like illustrations, complete with dark, enigmatic, and often ironic captions, have won him a large following among fans of Pop Art. This artist's book combines a selection of his drawings with a collection of his writings, including previously unpublished movie scipts and plays, for a unique, multidisciplinary approach to an artist whose work has been exhibited both at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and on a Sonic Youth album cover.